The strange afterlife and untapped potential of public domain content in GLAM institutions
CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
A presentation by Douglas McCarthy at ‘Open and Engaged 2023’, 30.10.23, British Library
A brief note about copyright (sorry)
Relevant law – European Union
Article 14
Works of visual art in the public domain
‘Member States shall provide that, when the term of protection of a work of visual art has expired, any material resulting from an act of reproduction of that work is not subject to copyright or related rights, unless the material resulting from that act of reproduction is original in the sense that it is the author’s own intellectual creation.’
[Directive 2019/790 copyright and related rights in the Digital Single Market]
Relevant law – UK
‘Simply creating a copy of an image won’t result in a new copyright in the new item.
According to established case law, the courts have said that copyright can only subsist in subject matter that is original in the sense that it is the author’s own ‘intellectual creation.’
And yet…
Jan van Eyck, The Arnolfini Portrait, 1432
© The National Gallery, London. CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
William Hogarth, A Rake’s Progress, 1735
Digital surrogates of The Rake’s Progress in UK collections | |
Bristol Museum & Art Gallery | In copyright |
British Council Visual Arts | In copyright |
British Museum | In copyright (CC BY-NC-SA) |
London Metropolitan Archive | In copyright |
National Galleries Scotland | In copyright (CC BY-NC) |
National Museum Wales | In copyright |
Royal Academy of Arts | In copyright |
Royal Collection Trust | In copyright |
Tate | In copyright (CC BY-NC-ND) |
Victoria & Albert Museum | In copyright |
Wellcome Collection | Public Domain Mark |
Whitworth | In copyright |
Digital surrogates of The Rake’s Progress in non-UK collections | |
Statens Museum for Kunst | CC0 |
Rijksmuseum | Public Domain Mark |
Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa | No known copyright restrictions |
Art Institute Chicago | CC0 |
Library of Congress | No known copyright restrictions |
Indianapolis Museum of Art | Public Domain |
Metropolitan Museum of Art | CC0 |
National Gallery of Art | Public Domain Mark |
New York Public Library | Public Domain |
Davison Art Center | No known copyright |
Worcester Art Museum | Public Domain |
Usage: Editorial
Media: Textbook
Territory: World. one language
Placement: Inside
Size: up to full page
Quantity: 4,001-10,000
Licence fee: £179
A tax on scholarship and knowledge
“But image fees must be charged to cover costs.”
Government Art Collection, UK
Balance sheet for image licensing activities:
2013 No profit
2014 No profit
2015 No profit
2016 No profit
2017 £180
© Crown copyright
National Museums Liverpool, UK
© 2023 National Museums Liverpool
Balance sheet for image licensing activities:
2018/19 -£7,471
2019/20 -£14,027
2020/21 -£19,070
2021/22 -£16,510
2022/23 -£14,795
The National Gallery, London
Balance sheet for image licensing activities:
Financial year 2021-22:
Income £71k
Costs £109k
Balance -£31k
Financial year 2022-23 (*8 months to Nov’22):
Income £99k
Costs £102k
Balance -£3k
© The National Gallery, London
‘If it’s difficult or expensive to get images of artworks from museums, people look for them elsewhere.’
Merete Sanderhoff, Statens Museum for Kunst
‘There is no consensus in the UK GLAM sector on what open access means, or should mean. There is also a fundamental misunderstanding of what the public domain is, includes and should include.’
There is another way
Open access in the GLAM sector
‘Open means anyone can freely access, use modify, and share [content] for any purpose.’
The Open Definition
Map visualisation of Open GLAM survey in Wikidata: https://w.wiki/7CX7
The global picture of Open GLAM today
1600+ GLAMs have released open access data.
95,000,000+ open access
digital objects.
Source:
Birmingham Museums Trust, UK
Open access since 2019
CC0 medium- to high-resolution images
Benefits of open access:
Cleveland Museum of Art, USA
Open access since 2019
CC0 medium- to high-resolution images
Benefits of open access:
Joseph Mallord William Turner
The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons, 16 October 1834, 1835
Cleveland Museum of Art, CC0
Cleveland Museum of Art: partnerships
‘Partnerships build community, provide demonstrable examples of the benefits of open access broadly and magnify impact and reach beyond the CMA’s own platforms.
Partnerships place the CMA's Open Access content directly in the hands of users who can create, remix and share their engagement with the collection and associated information.’
Statens Museum for Kunst, Denmark
Open access since 2016
CC0 medium- to high-resolution images
Benefits of open access
‘Making it available digitally on radically open terms gives us new possibilities to realize our obligation as national gallery: to make sure [...] the museum becomes a relevant and useful resource for everyone.’
Statens Museum for Kunst, Denmark
Open access → engagement in physical and digital settings
‘By being present where users are and look for information and materials — be they researchers, students, school kids, culture snackers, tourists, creatives or citizen scientists — the digitized collection can both work as a resource in its own right and lead users effectively back to the physical museum.
Citizen science community Wiki Labs Culture, since 2015
Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru / National Library of Wales
Conclusion: the benefits of Open GLAM
Status quo
Open and engaged
My term has now expired.
Thank you.
Douglas McCarthy
Bluesky @culturedoug.bsky.social
LinkedIn linkedin.com/in/douglaskmccarthy
Mastodon @CultureDoug@mastodon.social
Website douglasmccarthy.com